Strange: The government has been unable to address the concerns of Organised Labour regarding Galamsey.
The September-end deadline has ended without the slightest action or sign that anything is being done or can be done.
While neither President Akufo-Addo, Vice President Alhaji Mahamadu Bawumia nor any cabinet minister has reacted, I find it provocative that the NPP MP for Effiduase Asokore, Dr Ayew Afriyie, could look Ghanaians in the eye and state defiantly that “the government has no intention of banning illegal mining either today or in the foreseeable future”.
It amounts to calling the bluff of all 30 million-plus Ghanaians; that “nobody can do anything.” That’s the definition of impunity.
It is his reasoning that shocks me. According to him, such a ban could lead to significant losses for the party in the upcoming elections.
Meaning? What this man cares about is not the good of the people; all he cares about is votes on December 7 — which he is assured of because his constituency is a ‘World Bank’.
He alleges that the NDC has imported foreign nationals from Togo and Burkina Faso to engage in galamsey on river bodies in a bid to destabilise areas known for their strong pro-NPP sentiments.
Question: why is this MP so sure the “Togolese and Burkinabe” — if there are — will confess? We remember staged confessions in the former USSR and present-day North Korea.
The words that tumble from the mouths of our politicians are unprintable; indeed, would be unprintable in a Ghana of yesterday when wrong was wrong.
Before, or up to 2016, politicians who desired to be counted among the wise and decent joined the rest of society to condemn galamsey. Today, the tables have turned; the politician, dreaming of power and influence, celebrity status and Article 71 retirement perks, prefers to be heard promising protection for evil.
But Dr Ayew Afriyie did not surprise me.
What surprised me were the words of Prof. Naana Opoku-Agyemang at an NDC rally at Amenfi. Hear her justification of galamsey: “If a government comes and doesn’t create jobs, what are the youth supposed to do?”
I assured myself that this could not be my favourite Professor, the first female Vice-Chancellor of a state university in Ghana. As editor of the ‘Weekly Spectator newspaper, I was the first journalist to interview this brilliant lady one week after her appointment on October 1, 2008. She has been my role model since then and I have worshipped the very ground on which she’s walked these 16 years.
I was excited that her first visit after her appointment as running mate was to the Methodist Church. With ‘political’ words now dribbling out of her mouth, however, I am beginning to wonder if she’s the same Naana Jane or if has forgotten the sermon of that day.
Someone pointed out to me recently that there are no angels in politics. I retorted back my conviction that one need not be an angel to be decent.
My next shock was news that demonstrators against the government handling of Galamsey had been detained in an Akufo-Addo government; in the government of the leader of “Kume Preko”, the biggest anti-government demo in the Fourth Republic; in the government of the man we all knew, before 2017, as Ghana’s most famous human rights campaigner in history.
What changed? The answer is blowing in the wind.
For now, I am getting worried by the actions and utterances of the Electoral Commission. Is it too much to expect Jean Mensa to go the way of her predecessors?
In 2008, the then EC Chair, Prof. Afari-Djan, set up a committee made up of NPP and NDC members, with an EC Commissioner as Rapporteur, to investigate NDC’s allegation that two constituencies in Ashanti Region had a bloated register. The problem was resolved.
In 2015, Madam Charlotte Osei, as EC Chair, set up a five-member committee headed by Justice VCRAC Crabbe to go into NPP’s suspicion that the voter register contained names of Togolese and other African nationals. The outcome was acceptable to all, and we moved on, as a nation, in peace.
I am sure the NDC are not bullheaded; if they are reasoned with, I don’t see why they shouldn’t back down from their “forensic audit” position to that of an EC committee of investigation. It should be possible for the EC to bring civil society groups and heads of religious bodies to that table.
Insisting on a political right should not demonise any party; after all, the consistently long push for electoral reforms, spearheaded by NPP, has led to, first, the replacement of opaque with transparent ballot boxes and second, the biometric register. These are democratic achievements obtained on the back of protests and advocacy.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”. It was said by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. But Jean Mensa knows it is a truism.
